Instead, some of his friends and relatives remembered Rees at a candlelight vigil near the spot where he was shot and killed last August when he yelled at a driver for going too fast and told him to slow down.

Rees’ 9-year old son, Logan, clutched a small picture of he and his dad as the group sang a chorus of “Happy Birthday.”

At the home nearby where Gordon lived with his mother, friends signed a large bed sheet which hung on the front porch above a makeshift memorial.

“It’s crazy,” Rees’ sister, Christine Marie Lierson, said. “I never thought I’d ever have a memorial in the front of my house for my brother.”

“I had to lose my nephew just over telling somebody to slow down,” the victim’s aunt, Georgeianne Malizia, told KDKA-TV. “I’ve cried, but I still feel I haven’t got it all out yet.”

Markus Solomon, 18, has been charged in the shooting. He told police when he was arrested that he feared for his life because he thought he saw something shiny in Rees’ hand.

Solomon remains lodged in the Lawrence County Jail where he’s still awaiting trial.

Ralph Iannotti began working as a KDKA-TV general assignment reporter in 1982. You can watch for his reports weeknights on KDKA-TV News at Eleven.
Ralph is an investigative reporter and produces a weekly segment called "Crime Stoppers" in...